Internet addicts take note - Italy may have mussed your mojo.
A legal ruling last week from the land of Leonardo da Vinci has instilled doubt about the future of openness on the always open Internet, and that doubt maay trickle over into gamers' goings-on.
At issue was whether Web search giant Google impinged on the privacy of an autistic Italian boy in 2006 by posting a video of him being beaten by bullies at school. The film clip appeared on Google Video and was viewed thousands of times before it was pulled down and the boy's father pressed the case that posting the clip violated Italy's privacy protection laws.
An Italian court agreed Wednesday and sentenced three Google executives - chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former chief financial officer George Reyes, none of whom were involved in posting the video clip - in absentia for the violation, ruling that Google was responsible for upholding Italy's law and should have pulled down the video in a timely manner.
The executives will not serve time; their sentences were suspended. The ruling, however, hangs over the Internet like a sword of Damocles. In effect, it demands everyone who posts content online to take responsibility for that content regardless of the content's origin.
This threatens to be a particularly sticky wicket for content aggregators such as Google and Yahoo and YouTube, whose main task has been posting instead of policing. Social and gaming networks, too, would suffer if it means that not only sites like Facebook and services like PlayStation Home, but also the users of such sites and networks are held legally responsible for whatever they contribute.
Advocates of Internet freedom lament the ruling's potential chilling effect and parrot Google's statement that if left to stand "the Web as we know it would cease to exist." On the other hand, Italy is said to have a low rate of Internet commerce compared to the rest of Europe and its government has been debating various legislation to assert more control over Italians' Web usage.
Furthermore, the European Union, of which Italy is a part, asserts through its own regulations on Internet commerce that content providers should be free from the kind of crushing obligation imposed by the Italian court's ruling; thus, the ruling may conflict with established legal precedent.
In the end, this may be an example of the mouse that roared. The question is, will that roar have an ominous echo.
A legal ruling last week from the land of Leonardo da Vinci has instilled doubt about the future of openness on the always open Internet, and that doubt maay trickle over into gamers' goings-on.
At issue was whether Web search giant Google impinged on the privacy of an autistic Italian boy in 2006 by posting a video of him being beaten by bullies at school. The film clip appeared on Google Video and was viewed thousands of times before it was pulled down and the boy's father pressed the case that posting the clip violated Italy's privacy protection laws.
An Italian court agreed Wednesday and sentenced three Google executives - chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former chief financial officer George Reyes, none of whom were involved in posting the video clip - in absentia for the violation, ruling that Google was responsible for upholding Italy's law and should have pulled down the video in a timely manner.
The executives will not serve time; their sentences were suspended. The ruling, however, hangs over the Internet like a sword of Damocles. In effect, it demands everyone who posts content online to take responsibility for that content regardless of the content's origin.
This threatens to be a particularly sticky wicket for content aggregators such as Google and Yahoo and YouTube, whose main task has been posting instead of policing. Social and gaming networks, too, would suffer if it means that not only sites like Facebook and services like PlayStation Home, but also the users of such sites and networks are held legally responsible for whatever they contribute.
Advocates of Internet freedom lament the ruling's potential chilling effect and parrot Google's statement that if left to stand "the Web as we know it would cease to exist." On the other hand, Italy is said to have a low rate of Internet commerce compared to the rest of Europe and its government has been debating various legislation to assert more control over Italians' Web usage.
Furthermore, the European Union, of which Italy is a part, asserts through its own regulations on Internet commerce that content providers should be free from the kind of crushing obligation imposed by the Italian court's ruling; thus, the ruling may conflict with established legal precedent.
In the end, this may be an example of the mouse that roared. The question is, will that roar have an ominous echo.
